Google+ Followers

Wednesday, 31 December 2014

Cyril Stapleton (Dec. 31, 1914 - Feb. 25, 1974) was a
British violinist and jazz bandleader. Born in Mapperley, Nottingham. At age
seven, Cyril began studying the violin, and, at age 12, made his first
broadcast from 5NG, the local radio station in Nottingham. He was often heard
on broadcasts from the BBC Studios in Birmingham, but while still very young,
he went to Czechoslovakia in order to study under Sevcik, the famous Czech
violin teacher.

While still a teenager, he found work playing in cinema
'pit orchestras' accompanying silent films. At age 17, he won a Trinity College
of Music (London) scholarship. While still a student, he found work playing in
the Henry Hall Dance Band, just formed for BBC broadcasts. He was with the band
on their first ever broadcast, and can be heard playing on some of Hall's early
Columbia 78s recorded in 1932. At some point, Cyril left Hall and he returned
to Nottingham, and again found work in the local cinemas.

He next joined the Jack Payne Orchestra, and was a member
when the band toured to South Africa. And, again was heard on some of Payne's
1936 Rex label recordings (78rpm). When that job ended, Cyril formed his own
band in London, where he found work at The Casino (Compton Street), and also at
Fisher's Restaurant (New Bond Street). In 1939, he made his very first
broadcast with his own band. He also played briefly with the Jack Hylton
Orchestra, under Billy Ternent.

With the start of WWII, his musical career came to an
abrupt halt when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force as an air gunner. He soon
was organizing music for Camp shows and concerts at various military stations.
During this time, he visited New York City. During his final year of RAF
service (he served for a total of five years) he became a member of the RAF
Symphony Orchestra then playing in Uxbridge Upon his Service discharge, he
followed a career in 'Classical' music, and at one time, was a member of three
orchestras: the London Symphony, the National Symphony and the Philharmonia
Orchestra.

In 1947, for whatever reasons, found him back in London
again playing at Fisher's Restaurant with his own band. (One of his vocalists
was a young Dick James, who later became music publisher for The Beatles.)
Stapleton's band was also heard on late night broadcasts. In 1948, he added a
string section, and his work on such radio shows as "Your Hit Parade"
and "Golden Slipper" brought him wider fame.

In 1952, the "BBC Dance Orchestra" became the
"BBC Show Band", and Cyril Stapleton became the leader. The Show Band
was also seen in some early BBC Telecasts, further increasing Stapleton's fame.
The first broadcast was heard on October 2, 1952. Robert Farnon arranged the
band's signature tune, which opened to the words: "Just For You... “As the
BBC's prestige Pop music orchestra, the band attracted both top British stars,
and American entertainers such as Frank Sinatra and Nat 'King' Cole. In late
1955, a second Show Band film "Just for You" (Cinemascope, directed
by Michael Carreras, Odeon Cinema circuit) appeared. In 'The Story of a Starry
Night' section, Stapleton was the featured violin soloist, and further on also
accompanied Joan Regan on piano.

On June 28, 1957, the BBC announced a decision to end the
band. Cyril then formed his own group with which he toured and appeared at
venues all over the UK. He even managed two chart hits in the United States
with the instrumental "The Italian Theme" (#25, 1956) and "The
Children's Marching Song (Nick Nack Paddy Whack)" (#13, 1959). Stapleton
continued to tour and record into the 1970s; in 1965 he also became head of
A&R for Pye Records.Sadly he died from a heart attack at only 59 years of
age.

Over the years, many of the unknown youngsters who
guested with the band, went on to stardom in their own right, including such
names as singer Matt Monro, pianist Bill McGuffie (who later had his own
orchestra), Rikki Fulton, Stan Stennett , Bert Weedon and Tommy Whittle. (info mainly
from Big Bands Database)

Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Mary Frances Penick (December 30, 1931 – September 19,
2004), better known as Skeeter Davis, was an American country music singer best
known for crossover pop music songs of the early 1960s. She started out as part
of The Davis Sisters as a teenager in the late 1940s, eventually landing on RCA
Records. In the late '50s, she became a solo star. Her best-known hit was the
pop classic "The End of the World" in 1963.

One of the first women to achieve major stardom in the
country music field as a solo vocalist, she was an acknowledged influence on
Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton and was hailed as an "extraordinary
country/pop singer" by The New York Times music critic Robert Palmer.

Davis was the first of seven children born to William and
Punzie Penick, in Dry Ridge, Kentucky. Because her grandfather thought that she
had a lot of energy for a young child, he nicknamed Mary Frances
"Skeeter" (slang for mosquito). In 1947, the Penick family moved to
Erlanger, Kentucky, where Skeeter met Betty Jack Davis and Wanda Rose Rader at
Dixie Heights High School, becoming instant friends. They sang together through
much of high school, and at Decoursey Baptist Church, where Wanda's father was
the pastor. They formed a group known as the Davis Sisters (although they were
unrelated), and started singing on Detroit radio station WJR's program Barnyard
Frolics. Wanda was unable to travel, so Skeeter & B.J. began to make a name
as a duet. Eventually, the duo were signed by RCA Records in 1951.

RCA Records producer Steve Sholes liked the Davis
Sisters' harmonies and offered the duo a recording contract in 1953. Their most
successful release was "I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know", which
spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the country charts in 1953, as well as making the
Top 20 on the pop charts. The record ranks No. 65 on the Top 100 Country
Singles of All Time, according to Billboard historian Joel Whitburn.

While "I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know" was
climbing the charts, the Davis Sisters were involved in a major car accident on
August 1, 1953. The crash killed Betty Jack Davis and left Skeeter with severe
injuries. After the accident, Skeeter and Betty Jack's sister Georgia continued
as the Davis Sisters although none of their records were major hits. Skeeter
decided to retire from the music industry in 1956 and get married, ending the
duet.

In the early '60s, Davis followed the heels of Brenda Lee
and Patsy Cline to become one of the first big-selling female country crossover
acts, although her pop success was pretty short-lived. The weepy ballad
"The End of the World," though, was a massive hit, reaching number
two in 1963.

"I Can't Stay Mad at You," a Top Ten hit the same year,
was downright rock & roll; penned by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, it
sounded like (and was) an authentic Brill Building girl group-styled classic.
Goffin and King also wrote another successful girl group knockoff for her,
"Let Me Get Close to You," although such efforts were the exception
rather than the rule. Usually she sang sentimental, country-oriented tunes with
enough pop hooks to catch the ears of a wider audience, such as "I Will."

Davis concentrated on the country market after the early
'60s, although she never seemed too comfortable limiting herself to the
Nashville crowd. She recorded a Buddy Holly tribute album in 1967, when Holly
wasn't a hot ticket with either the country or the rock audience. But she
certainly didn't reject country conventions either: She performed on the Grand
Ole Opry and recorded duets with Bobby Bare, Porter Wagoner, and George
Hamilton IV. In the 1980s, she had a mild comeback with the rock crowd after
recording an album with NRBQ; she also married NRBQ's bass player, Joey
Spampinato.

Davis continued to perform frequently throughout much of
the 1990s and into 2000. Quite a bit of her touring during the 1980s and 1990s
was in international markets such as Barbados and Singapore where she remained
a pop superstar. In 2001 she became incapacitated by the breast cancer that
would claim her life. While Davis remained a member of the Grand Ole Opry until
her death, she last appeared there in 2002. She died of breast cancer in a
Nashville, Tennessee, hospice at the age of 72, on September 19, 2004.(Info edited from Wikipedia & All music)

Monday, 29 December 2014

Thore Olof Gottfrid
Ehrling (born 29 December 1912 in Stockholm, died 21 October 1994 at Lidingo),
was a band leader, musician, composer,
arranger and the most successful of all Swedish band leaders during the 1940s
and 1950s. He is the father of the composer Staffan Ehrling .

Thore Ehrling formed a
jazz band in school. There he played the trumpet, after changing from althorn,
which he played in the ordinary school orchestra. From 1931 - 1935 he studied
at the Conservatory of Music in Stockholm. Ehrling played trumpet with, among
others, Hakan von Eichwald and Charles Redland in the 1920's and 1930's, and
formed their own orchestra in 1938. Later it was extended to being a big band
and became one of the leaders in the Swedish swing-era.

The band was on of the
most loved bands in Sweden in the forties, in the winter Thore played at Bal
palais and in the summer outside at Skansen. Still you can hear older people,
speaking with a dreamy glow in their eyes, how they found their love dancing at
Skansen glancing over the shoulder at beautiful and well singing vocalists like
Sonia Sjöbeck or later Britt-Inger Dreilick. The band's signature tune
"Let's dance" started many radio transmissions, eg from Skansen 1940
- 1956 .His band was high class and most of the Swedish top musicians where
always to be found in his orchestra.

Besides the big bands, he
sometimes led small Dixieland-type groups. On a 1939 recording session, two of
Thore's sidemen were Nat and Bruts Gonella. In addition to the signature tune
he wrote several songs, including the most famous is "A moonlight
walk", "Rain-laden clouds" and "Ole dole doff". He
founded in 1941 music publisher Ehrling & Löfven Holm (from 1952 Thore
Ehrling Music Ltd), which today also includes Nils-Georg's music publishing AB
Edition Sylvain AB.

Thore Ehrling disbanded
his orchestra in 1957 and worked for a quarter of a century of Radio Service /
Swedish Radio , where he led the Radiotjänst dance orchestra. In 1959 and 1960
he was conductor of the Swedish Eurovision Song Contest on TV. From 1932 to
1972 he recorded more than 1000 phonograph recordings. He died on October 21,
1994 in Lidingö, Stockholms län, Sweden and is buried in Lidingö cemetery.

Sunday, 28 December 2014

André Verchuren (born
Neuilly-sous-Clermont, Oise 28 December 1920; died Chantilly 10 July 2013) was
a French accordionist and songwriter.

In France André Verchuren
was known as the king of the accordion. He belonged to the populist,
crowd-pleasing school of virtuosi of the instrument known as the piano à
bretelles – piano with straps – alongside Yvette Horner, dubbed “the queen of
the accordion”.

Born André Verschueren at
Neuilly-sous-Clermont, near Paris, in 1920, he strapped on his first accordion
as a four-year old – “before I could write,” he stressed – and thus continued
the family tradition started by his paternal grandfather, a Belgian miner with
a sideline in bal des familles, and his father, who ran an accordion school. In
his mid-teens, he began teaching at the school and gigging with his father and
his mother on drums. In 1936, he won the accordion world championship, leaving
audience and judges aghast by breaking with tradition and playing standing up.
Until the advent of the Second World War, he juggled music commitments with
work as a waiter and a gardener.

He joined the French
resistance and sheltered Allied parachutists passing through the French capital,
naming his eldest son Harry Williams after one of them. However, in 1944, he
was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Dachau concentration camp where he
spent a harrowing year. On 14 July 1944, he was badly beaten after encouraging
fellow prisoners to sing “La Marseillaise”. In common with many veterans,
Verchuren didn’t like talking about the war but was commended for his actions
by both President

Eisenhower and Général de Gaulle. In 1986 he was made
Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian honour, and was
promoted to “Officier” of the order in 1997. Other awards acknowledged both his
role in the resistance and his standing as the country’s top accordionist.

Following the liberation,
Verchuren struggled to recover the agility in his fingers but eventually
returned to performing. In 1950, Murena put him forward for the Radio
Luxembourg contest show Swing Contre Musette, which commanded a huge
listenership. Appearing in front of an appreciative crowd at the Moulin Rouge,
he beat the jazz combo and earned himself a record deal and a slot on the
commercial station for the next 17 years – his radio career continued for
another 13 years after he moved to RTL’s main rival, Europe 1.

Here's "Tico Tico" from above album

Nicknamed “Verchu” by his
millions of fans, in 1956, he became the first accordionist to appear at the
Olympia, and returned to headline the famed Parisian venue in 2003 and 2007. He
toured constantly, playing up to 150 shows a year, and pioneered the
bal-music-hall concept, combining a dance band repertoire and a dynamic stage
show with the odd skit. He also guested in popular films and was a mainstay of
the French television schedules.

In 1968, he published his
autobiography, predictably entitled Mon accordéon et moi. A cycling aficionado,
in 1972, he recorded ‘’Vive Poulidor’’, a paean to Raymond Poulidor, France’s
most popular cyclist of the day. But this punishing schedule took its toll. In
1974, Verchuren’s wife was killed in a car crash for which he was held
responsible since he was driving.

“Dance halls, music and
touring are like drugs to me,” he admitted. “As soon as I strap on the
accordion, I feel like a different, younger man. It’s on stage I feel most
alive. That’s what I live for.”

“My life can be summed up
with a few impressive figures: I travelled seven million kilometres by car, one
million kilometres by plane, and sold over 50 million records. But most
importantly, I made 17 million couples get up and dance,” Verchuren told Le
Parisien newspaper in 1992.

He finally retired in
2012; his death on 10 July 2013, aged 91, was caused by a heart attack while dining in a
pizzeria. He had two sons, both of whom play the accordion professionally. (Info
edited from the Independent.co.uk)

Friday, 26 December 2014

Michael John "Jimmy" Roselli (December 26, 1925 –
June 30, 2011) was one of the most significant Italian-American pop singers of
his time, during an era of formidable competition from such performers as Frank
Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Frankie Laine, Vic Damone and Jerry Vale.

Roselli was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. He had success with
the song "Mala Femmena", which sold over three million records in
1963. It never was a hit song for him, but is considered his signature song.
His only pop hit was a remake of "There Must Be A Way", a song
previously recorded by Joni James. It reached number 93 in the Billboard′s pop
charts. "There Must Be A Way" was an easy-listening hit, reaching #13
in Billboard and #2 in Record World. The song was recorded in 1967. It became
a hit in Britain and he performed at the London Palladium and Royal Albert
Hall.

He also had success
with the song "All The Time" that same year. The song reached number
19 in the Billboard's easy listening charts. His third and last hit song was
"Please Believe Me" in 1968. That song reached number 31 in the
Billboard's easy listening charts. Those were his only U.S. hit singles,
although his version of "When Your Old Wedding Ring Was New" twice
appeared in the UK Singles Chart. It peaked at number 51 in 1983, and number 52
in 1987.

At the beginning of his career, with appearances on the Ed
Sullivan Show, with Jimmy Durante, and on the famous Copacabana, critics were
calling him a 'miracle'". As the New Yorker Magazine states, "guys
were trying to put a stranglehold on him. He pushed them all away. Although he
was in good terms with a number of mob chieftains, he claimed that he had
"never done business with organized criminals". Roselli at times was
relegated to selling his music out of the trunk of his car parked in Little
Italy in Manhattan (he was the founder and owner of M&R Records).

Jimmy Roselli is a favorite among Italian-Americans and his
signature tune "Mala Femmina" is featured twice in Martin Scorsese's
early classic Mean Streets. Roselli sang in perfect Neapolitan dialect. Other
Neapolitan songs recorded by Roselli include "Core 'ngrato",
"Anema e core" and "Scapricciatiello". Jerry Lewis said of
him that "Roselli sings as an Italian should sing". He sang the title
song "Who Can Say?" for the 1966 Italian documentary film Africa
Addio. Under United Artists, he delivered roughly 35 albums and he often
appeared to packed crowds at the legendary 500 Club in Atlantic City.

From 1969, however, Roselli all but disappeared. Bookings
dried up. Radio stations stopped playing his songs and his records vanished
from the stores. According to Roselli, the sudden reversal came about when
Sinatra’s mother Dolly (the Sinatras were neighbours in Hoboken, New Jersey)
sent round two sidekicks to ask him whether he would sing at a charity concert
she was organising. Insulted that she did not come herself, Roselli replied:
”Tell her I’ve got to get $25,000, and she’s got to pay for the orchestra.”

Roselli’s claim that a furious Sinatra then arranged for his
Mafia pals to torpedo his career was subsequently backed up by New York
investigators. As a result, it was Sinatra who became the most famous
Italian-American crooner from Hoboken.

In his authorised biography of the singer, Making the
Wiseguys Weep, David Evanier suggested that it was Roselli’s self-destructive
streak as much the Mob that held back his career. He turned down a role in The
Godfather Part II, as well as appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny
Carson, because they would not pay what he thought he was worth. He walked out
of a seven-show stint on The Ed Sullivan Show after only three appearances .

In the 1990s it appears that Roselli settled his differences
with the Mob. He returned to the performing circuit, earning up to $100,000 a
time.

He retired in 2004 and died from heart complications in 2011
at his home in Clearwater, Florida. (Info edited from the Telegraph.co.uk and Wikipedia)

Thursday, 25 December 2014

Ralph Marterie, (born as Ralph Martire) 24 December 1914,
Accerra, near Naples, Italy, d. 10 October 1978, Dayton, Ohio, USA., was a
musician, arranger and one of the last of the big-band leaders who was to enjoy
consistent commercial success.

While Marterie was still a child his parents emigrated to
the USA, where his father joined the orchestra of the Chicago Civic Opera.
Ralph was still a teenager when he started playing trumpet with Danny Russo's
Oriole Orchestra. He went on to play in local theatres and with other bands in
Chicago, which was at that time the country's largest musical centre outside
New York. Consequently, Marterie never had to leave the city to find work,
joining the NBC staff orchestra where he played under conductors such as Percy
Faith and André Kostelanetz. During World War II Marterie led a US Navy band,
then after the war he returned to Chicago as a leader with ABC radio.

His big opportunity came when Mercury Records signed him in
1951, and gave the band a big build up. It is interesting to note that Ralph
formed the band at the end of the big band era. Still, other leaders were
willing to give the band-leading business a try. Ralph's new band debuted in
1951, the same year that Billy May organized his big band. The following year,
1952, saw the start of the Sauter-Finegan orchestra. In 1953 Les and Larry
Elgart formed their short lived band, while, in the mid 50's Maynard Ferguson
brought his band to fruition.

Marterie toured with his band throughout the 1950s,
appearing at Frank Dailey's Meadowbrook on the East Coast as well as The
Hollywood Palladium on the West Coast. At times, Bill Walters, Janice Borla,
and Lou Prano, were vocalists. They had a radio show sponsored by the Marlboro
Cigarette Company. They appeared on WGN's "The Cavalcade of Bands"
television show. After Mercury Records, the orchestra recorded for United
Artists and for Musicor.

He did not achieve instant success but in 1952 the band spent
10 weeks in the US charts with "Caravan", earning a second Gold Disc
the following year with "Pretend". His version of "Crazy, Man,
Crazy" reached #13 on the Billboard jockey chart and #11 on Cashbox in
June, 1953. is album and singles output varied between swing standards,
novelties and pop instrumentals that highlighted his trademark of trumpet and
guitar voiced together (compare his temporary partnership with
guitarist/musical director Al Caiola on a cover version of "Acapulco
22"). There were moderate hits with "Guaglione",
"Skokiaan" and "Tequila", which were successful enough to
maintain his reputation and keep him working through changing fashions in pop
music. Marterie was still touring with a band until his death in Dayton, where
he had just played a one-nighter in October 1978.

The daughters of
Ralph Marterie held onto his music library and personal memorabilia for many
years, but in late 2001 placed an ad in International Musician, offering more
than 100 scores written for his band, in lots of 10 at $700 each. Then, in
January 2005, scores and other personal items were listed on Ebay with a
buy-it-now price of $2,500, then re-listed in March, with a starting price of
$2,200. Other memorabilia is in the hands of private collectors. (Info from various sources, mainly Oldies.com)

Monday, 22 December 2014

André Kostelanetz (December 22, 1901 – January 13, 1980)
was a popular orchestral music conductor and arranger, one of the pioneers of
easy listening music.

Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia; educated in Czarist
days, he and his family remained there through the early days of the
revolution, and Kostelanetz became the assistant conductor at the Petrograd
Opera before he reached the age of 20. By 1922, though, the Soviet regime was
weeding Imperial influences from the cultural world, and the family emigrated
to the United States.Kostelanetz quickly found work with the Metropolitan
Opera as an assistant conductor, and whenCBS radio formed its own studio
orchestra, he went to work for them as conductor for classical and light music
shows.

Despite his deep roots in classical music, Kostelanetz
never turned his nose up at popular music. Instead, he adapted numerous tunes
from operattas, musicals, and vaudeville to a symphonic orchestration, and listeners came in flocks.
Few pop arrangers could match his background and resources, and, at the time,
most classical artists refused to venture away from the grand old repertoire,
so Kostelanetz grabbed an early lead and held onto it for much of the next four
decades.

Kostelanetz never
completely left the classical world. He recorded lighter classical pieces such
as Ferde Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite" and Gershwin's "Rhapsody
in Blue" over and over again, and had a very successful series of
"Operas without Words." He was married to the diva, Lily Pons, and
accompanied her in countless performances on stage and radio. He appeared with
the New York Philharmonic--albeit in a pops concert--at least once a year well
into the 1970s. And he sponsored the first performance and recording of
composer Alan Hovanhess' ecological oratorio, "And God Created Great Whales."

But his main focus was on combining constant improvements
in recording technology with a symphonic ensemble and tightly woven and highly
polished arrangements to create what we know and love as easy listening--or
rather, elevator--music. He recorded a steady 4-6 albums a year for Columbia
for over 25 years, and as time went by, he drifted more and more towards
contemporary material. If it was in the Billboard Top 10, you stood a good
chance of hearing it smoothed out, mellowed down, gently anesthetized, and
carefully delivered by Kostelanetz six months to a year later. Not that he ever
tackled anything the slightest bit provocative. MGM's Fantabulous Strings might
flail away at "The Beat Goes On," but Kostelanetz stuck with the
milder "Scarborough" fare.

Outside the United States, one of his best known works
was an orchestral arrangement of the tune "With a Song in my Heart",
which was the signature tune of a long-running BBC radio program, at first
called Forces Favourites, then Family Favourites, and finally Two Way Family
Favourites.

He commissioned many works, including Aaron Copland's
Lincoln Portrait, Jerome Kern's Portrait of Mark Twain, William Schuman's New
England Triptych, Paul Creston's Frontiers, Ferde Grofé's Hudson River Suite,
Virgil Thomson's musical portraits of Fiorello La Guardia and Dorothy Thompson,
Alan Hovhaness's Floating World, and Ezra Laderman's Magic Prison. William
Walton dedicated his Capriccio burlesco to Kostelanetz, who conducted the first
performance and made the first recording, both with the New York Philharmonic.

Toward the end of his recording career, his name was more
of a brand than a true representation of who actually made the music, because
nearly all of his output in the 1970s was arranged by others. Some of the
arrangers credited on 1970s Kostelanetz albums include Teo Macero, Torrie Zito,
Hank Levy, Luther Henderson, Jack Cortner, Eddie Sauter, Claus Ogerman, Jack
Pleis, Tommy Newsom, Harold Wheeler, Bobby Scott, LaMont Johnson, Wade Marcus,
Patrick Williams, Sammy Nestico, Warren Vincent, Dick Hyman, Jorge Calandrelli
and Don Sebesky.

Kostelanetz's last
concert was A Night in Old Vienna with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at
that city's War Memorial Opera House on December 31, 1979.

He died in Haiti on
January 13, 1980, aged 78. (Info edited from Space Age Pop &amp; Wikipedia)

Sunday, 21 December 2014

Rita Reys (born Maria Everdina Reijs; 21 December 1924 – 28 July 2013) was a jazz
singer from the Netherlands. At the 1960 French jazz festival of Juan-les-Pins,
she received the title, "Europe's first lady of jazz".

Rita Reys was born in Rotterdam and – with a
violinist/conductor for a father and a dancer for a mother – grew up taking
performance for granted. As a child, she heard only classical music at home,
but as a teenage singer,she began winning local talent competitions. At 19,
when she met the jazz drummer Wessel Ilcken, she was introduced to jazz. She
married Ilcken, joined his sextet and toured the Netherlands. She appeared with
the bassist Ted Powder in Belgium and Luxembourg, and with the Piet van Dijk
orchestra in Spain and north Africa, between 1945 and 1950.

Reys then began leading her own group with Ilcken, toured
England, and, after moving to Stockholm in 1953, made her first recordings with
leading Swedish musicians including the baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin. She
also got acquainted with many American artists regularly visiting the country,
including Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young and the trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie,
Quincy Jones, Clifford Brown and Art Farmer.

The Columbia Records producer George Avakian invited her
to the US in 1956, and she recorded The Cool Voice of Rita Reys with an A-list
bebop lineup including Art Blakey, Horace Silver and Donald Byrd, musicians
with whom she also performed at New York's Village Vanguard. Reys also worked
in the US with the organist Jimmy Smith, began a lifelong friendship with
Bennett and later returned to the Vanguard with the drummer Chico Hamilton's
band.

Ilcken died of a brain haemorrhage in 1957. Reys stayed
on the road to support herself and their daughter, Leila – working in Germany
with the celebrated bandleader Kurt Edelhagen and pianist Bengt Hallberg, and
in Paris with Young. Reys also began performing with Ilcken's pianist Pim
Jacobs, whom she married in 1960.

Here's "Falling In Love With Love" from above album

In 1969 she became the first Dutch jazz singer to perform
at the New Orleans jazz festival (the city went on to make her a citizen of
honour 11 years later). In middle age, Reys shifted toward a more broadly popular
repertoire, collaborating with the conductor and arranger Rogier van Otterloo
and his orchestra on Rita Reys Sings Burt Bacharach and Rita Reys Sings Michel
Legrand (both of which won the Dutch music industry's Edison award), and later
on songbook projects dedicated to George Gershwin and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Reys was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985, but kept
the news from the press and was back onstage with Jacobs at a sold-out
Amsterdam Concertgebouw within weeks of surgery – a gig she subsequently
recognised as "a new start". She made a Christmas album with Jacobs
and Amsterdam's Metropole Orchestra in 1986. She also recorded two American
Songbook albums with Jacobs – these were their last recordings before his death
from cancer in 1996.

Accompanied by the pianist Lex Jasper, Reys went back on
the road, recorded the albums Loss of Love – Rita Reys Sings Henry Mancini and
(for her 75th birthday) The Lady Strikes Again, and in 2004 collaborated on the
autobiography Rita Reys, Lady Jazz with the journalist Bert Vuijsje.

She dedicated the 2004 album Beautiful Love to Jacobs and
made the 2010 album Young at Heart with the saxophonist Scott Hamilton and the
organist Thijs van Leer. An inspiringly spirited and much-loved artist whose
reputation in the Netherlands never waned, Reys' remarkable life in her
homeland fulfilled Legrand's prediction, after her 1972 interpretations of his
work: "From now on, every time I will write a song, I will think of the
great Rita Reys, who sings the love songs with such love, that I really love
her – and you will too."

On 28 July 2013, Reys died at the age of 88 in Breukelen,
The Netherlands. (Info mainly from theGuardian.com)

Rita Reys performing Mr. Wonderful accompanied by the Pim
Jacobs Trio and special guest Johnny Griffin on tenor saxophone, during a TV
program that was broadcast on Dutch public television in 1979 on occasion of
Rita's album That Old Feeling.

About Me

I just love nostalgia, especially music from the 1920's to the 1960's.
I also present a radio show "Gems From The Vaults" on Angel Radio.
Please note the mp3's are for evaluation purposes only and are only available for a limited period. Where possible please support the artists and buy their records.
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
All researched information has been collected in good faith and researched from reputable sources.
If you would like me to do a re-post on any of the artists archived, please let me know.